A Play Journal: The Bane of My Existence

Awesome! Loving the updates, also giving me some inspiration. I have been wanting to play some of the SoAs for awhile now, thanks for some ideas.

Day 7: Sharkhead and Teaming

I last left Fara as she was finishing up her milestone objectives in Cap Au Diable. When I logged, she still have to finish up the Willie Wheeler arc who has a patsy of an elite boss at the end of arc, Ace McKnight, and finish up the underwhelming Fortunata Hamilton SoA missions.

Like many of you, while I was initially excited by the SoA special missions, I quickly grew disenchanted with them. The first ones involving Alan Desslock were fairly good; beating up on Jenkins, for example, is worth a good laugh. The SoA arc in the late teens and 20s really boil down to a series of find the glowie type missions which are uninspired, boring and have no real sense of tension. Still, they can be finished fast and if you have some sort of stealth. You can get three of them done in about 20 minutes total.

Before leaving Cap Au Diable, I wanted to also get the next costume slot by visiting the Face Maker and knocking out 30 Family and get both the temp stealth and Shivan pet in Bloody Bay. I look at Bloody Bay as a good measuring stick of a character's power. If a character struggles with getting a Shivan, they'll struggle soloing in the 20s. That's very possible with some character types such as some team-oriented defenders, controllers and corruptors (though many variants of the aforementioned ATs finish the Shivan challenge with no difficulty whatsoever).



Fara had very little difficulty in obtaining both the ore samples and defeating the turrets. The only real danger posed by the exercise were the NPCs in the zone which because of special PvP rules are far more formidable than the counterparts you'd encounter in PvE areas. As expected, the zone was almost completely empty even in prime time playing hours since players have essentially abondoned the CoH PvP experience. What you're left with now is primarily a "PvE" zone with some fairly dangerous NPCs and some rather powerful rewards that are outsized for the level of challenge presented. If some of you are avoiding entering a PvP zone due to a dislike for engaging other players, I assure you that you have little to worry about these days.

Having leveled to terror level 21, Fara entered Sharkhead. As she was missing the next badge in her quest of Invader, Fara quickly completed five mayhem missions and successfully robbed the Steel Canyon bank, getting the Steel Worker badge en route. Completing the bank mission leveled Fara to terror level 22. She also entered Siren's Call, and did a quick patrol to get her second temp stealth power. Oddly, she encountered a hero player but we largely ignored each other and the hero quickly entered a PvP mission instance and Fara proceeded to finish her patrol and leave.

At this juncture in her villainous career, Fara hadn't yet teamed with any other characters. I purposely chose to go more slowly so I could grab any badges I'd need for accolades and to be able to go through the SoA content at the native level for each contact. After leaving Siren's, I got a friendly tell from a player asking if I wanted to join a team.

I decided to accept the offer and Fara joined a team of two other SoAs and a stalker. As you all know, SoAs, if they take their leadership toggles, are a force to be reckoned with. Three SoAs pretty much made us all bulletproof. And the soldier spec currently used by Fara was a good contributor since she brought AoEs, a -res debuff and Wide Area Web Grenade. Soon the team expanded to include a DP/Kin Corruptor and a Demon Summoning/Dark MM. It was pretty much a slaughter house at that point, and Fara leveled safely to terror level 23.



Fara left that team about a half level away from 24 and her mandatory respec. She was just on the threshold of becoming a Bane.

Day 8: Finally a Bane

When I last left Fara, she was halfway to level 24. Fara undertook the story arc from Darren Wade. She blitzed through the arc as her AoE attack chain of Wide Area Grenade, Venom Grenade, Frag Grenade and Heavy Burst was largely complete.

Unlike a few characters I had, Fara had little difficulty dispatching both Kababra Kill and Sigil, the first hero class (actually, they're about as hard as tough bosses) NPCs she encountered. Knowing the grand finale of the arc, I bought Fara an Ethereal Shift temp power and phased out of the Midnight Club as soon she clicked the last glowie of the mission. At the end of the arc, Fara had hit terror level 24 and was about a third of the way to level 25.

Training to level 24 calls for a mandatory respec. Having grown fond of the Huntsman/Soldier build so far, I took advantage of the second build and leveled it up as a Huntsman. On the primary build, Fara moved into becoming a Bane. To celebrate the completion of her soldier training, I outfitted Fara with some new duds. Here's a picture of Fara standing next to her newest acquaintance, Dean MacArthur.



So far, I felt that the default mission difficulty was adequate since the Huntsman spec, while safe, wasn't an offensive power house. I hoped that moving to the Bane specialization would amp up Fara's offense, and hence allow me to raise the difficulty beyond default levels.

To test out her new powers, Fara started up the Dean MacArthur arc. The Bane build played much like a stalker. With stealth capabilities and Build Up, a Bane can deliver a tremendous amount of burst damage, able to two shot orange conning Lts. Generally, in a spawn of three, Fara would utterly decimate one, kill the other in two hits and then wait for her attacks to charge to dispatch the third. It felt a bit clunky but workable.

Below is Fara's level 24 build:

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.704
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
Bane Theoretical: Level 25 Natural Arachnos Soldier
Primary Power Set: Bane Spider Soldier
Secondary Power Set: Bane Spider Training
Power Pool: Fitness
Villain Profile:
Level 1: Bash -- B'ngBlow-Acc/Dmg(A), S'ngH'mkr-Acc/Dmg(3), Dmg-I(5), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/Rchg(23)
Level 1: Wolf Spider Armor -- S'fstPrt-ResKB(A)
Level 2: Combat Training: Defensive -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(3), DefBuff-I(5)
Level 4: Bane Spider Armor Upgrade -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/EndRdx(A), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(7), ResDam-I(9)
Level 6: Build Up -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(7), RechRdx-I(9)
Level 8: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 10: Tactical Training: Maneuvers -- S'dpty-Def/EndRdx(A), DefBuff-I(11), DefBuff-I(11)
Level 12: Poisonous Ray -- Mael'Fry-Acc/Dmg(A), Volly-Acc/Dmg(13), Dmg-I(13), Volly-Dmg/EndRdx(17)
Level 14: Pulverize -- S'ngH'mkr-Acc/Dmg(A), B'ngBlow-Acc/Dmg(15), Dmg-I(15), B'ngBlow-Dmg/EndRdx(17)
Level 16: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 18: Shatter -- B'Snap-Acc/Dmg(A), B'ngBlow-Acc/Dmg(19), Dmg-I(19), B'ngBlow-Dmg/EndRdx(21), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(23)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(21)
Level 22: Mental Training -- Run-I(A)
Level 24: Cloaking Device -- S'dpty-Def/EndRdx(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Conditioning
Level 6: Ninja Run
------------

The Dean MacArthur mission went smoothly until she came across her very first clone. I'm not sure how well your character do against clones, but a clone that can stealth, hit build up and essentially deliver huge burst damage is not fun to fight against. Fara suffered her very first character defeat against her own clone.



This was sort of encouraging in a way, since if an NPC with those powers was that formidable, a character with those same powers should be powerful (right? )

Anyway, after using the Resuscitate temp power and returning the same amount whop*ss that the clone just delivered, Fara was able to complete both Dean MacArthur's arc and Leonard's arc. Strangely, the fight with Protean was highly anticlimatic. Jousting and prodigious use of Build Up and Placate made the fight quick and painless, especially since Protean telegraphs his signature uber power. Finishing that arc, Fara reached terror level 26.

Day 9: Upping Up the Difficulty

It's amazing how much difference a couple of levels and a few more slots can make on a character. While Fara the Bane felt weak at level 24, by level 28 she was far more formidable. Another slot in each attack upping both its accuracy and smoothing out its recharge made a significant difference. Every attack is frankenslotted with a mixture of set IOs concentrating on accuracy, damage and some recharge and end reduction (depending on what's needed).

Even though her defenses have remained largely the same (22% melee/AoE and 34% range), Fara can output enough damage in her first three attacks to take a +1 boss down to around 25%. It's enough offense that I felt comfortable moving her difficulty to +1 level / x1 players / with bosses. Enabling bosses by itself ups the mission complete bonuses enough that finishing a mission seems to make quite a dent on the xp bar.



Fara's offense seems formidable but she's still a one-dimensional character. She still plays like a stalker with weaker defenses. She has no AoE capability and she's irritatingly squishy. In a fight where there's been some critical misses or where she's been debuffed makes her over reliant on inspirations. Enough so that I don't feel like I can go into a significant boss fight without having a number of greens.

I plan to change that of course. The next few power picks are designed to flesh out her abilities. Level 28 will see the return of Venom Grenade, level 30 will start the fighting pool, level 32 will be reserved for Crowd Control and level 35 and 38 will be Tough and Weave respectively.

My hope is that Venom Grenade + Crowd Control will give her more AoE ability while the fighting pool will give her more resiliency and up her defenses.

Why did I opt for Venom Grenade over Surveillance? They're both 20% -res powers but Surveillance is single target while Venom Grenade affects multiple targets. As fas I know, Surveillance doesn't aggro the target (and hence break stealth) and provides a significant defense debuff. Vendom Grenade definitely does cause aggro, but also does a significant amount of damage. Then there's a redraw factor, switching from mace to gun back to mace which may drive some players crazy (doesn't bother me).

Basically it came down to wanting some more damage and being able to debuff multiple targets instead of just one. My hunch is that I'll open from stealth with build up and shatter, hit the remaining targets with Venom Grenade and then clobber them with Crowd Control. This is theoretical at this point, but if it doesn't work, I can always respec.

I'm hoping to turn this character into something more than a stalker lite, and I see the next few levels as being crucial for that.

Just a bit of (unsolicited) feedback, but this journal is very entertaining and informative. I love how you're using screenshots and personal insights, and I just wanted to encourage you to please continue. or as Pappy Spellbinder would say, "This is good stuff."

Day 10-11: Building Power

I haven't updated in a while largely because I didn't have much to report. Fara successfully leveled out of her 20s and is now level 32. Currently, Fara has been on patrol for 49 hours, has 304,087,392 infamy, 150 reward merits and has a mixture of set IOs to frankenslot her powers. She has no meaningful set bonuses other than the Steadfast Res/Def IO and a couple of very small hitpoint bonuses.

49 hours to level 32 isn't fast by any means, but because of the odd hours I've been playing, I've only teamed for 1 level. Further, I've been religiously trying to finish story arcs, get every badge for each mayhem mission and avoid AE entirely.

Right now, power-wise, Fara is really only marginally better than a SO build at this point. Slightly better defense (due to the Steadfast), better end management due to frankenslotting, better accuracy due to frankenslotting but nothing else that you couldn't get with a straight SO build. Banes are clearly a build that matures late. I honestly don't see significant improvement in Fara's survivability until the late 30s when she can properly slot up Tough and begin to start using some of the better global set bonuses.

Still, she isn't shabby and with some inspiration use she was able to down Baracuda, The Shaper, and Calistyx as +1 Elite Bosses. She also had a run in with Back Alley Brawler, but unfortunately, a scaled Freedom Phalanx member is still too much. I had to Shivan him to clear the mission.



The fight with BAB pretty much sums up Fara's current power to a tee. She has great offensive capability, particularly burst with her first three attacks. It was impressive much of BAB's life she took off with her first salvo of attacks. However, she couldn't sustain and when the second set of purples wore off and BAB's invulnerability uber power kicked in, BAB was able to quickly two shot Fara into the dust.

I really dislike how fragile Banes are at this point. I'm hoping that Tough and more hitpoints later on will ameliorate the situation. I'm not looking for brute level toughness but something that can do better than being two shotted by a +1 Elite Boss.

The other capability I've been working towards is giving Fara some AoE capabilities. Venom Grenade is great and has worked out better than I thought it would. While Surveillance will be missed, the ability to debuff an entire group and deal damage at the same time is very nice. At level 32, Fara trained up Crowd Control and I'm hoping that this power will give her the added dimension to be able to deal damage to groups. I don't have any expectation that Crowd Control will have a big radius, but just being able to damage adjacent targets is something that would be welcome.

Finally as Fara hit her 30s, it called for a new costume design. I went with the ninja look this time, silver with black accents.

While I didn't level up as a bane, (went huntsman) I do have a bane as second build. I have found the single target hold (web cacoon I think) quite handy. Stacks nicely with the hold attack that the spider bots like to spam.

Now that you're in your 30's, I suggest you start working on IO +DEF bonuses. This'll be the key to your enjoyment on the Bane, as you'll feel like a Mace/SR Scrapper/Stalker once you get all of your positional defenses over 40%. Range is easy to softcap, while Melee and AoE are a little tougher.

Crowd Control is a great power and it'll finish off those pesky Minions while you concentrate on the big boys.

Day 12: Crowd Control

I hit level 33 earlier today and wasn't going to update until I got a couple of more powers and slots on the build. However, Crowd Control is just too good not to talk about. It's like that super popular, friendly guy you want everyone to know because he's become your best friend. I am completely impressed with what it can do. Huge cone, good damage and excellent mitigation. Best yet, Venom Grenade and Crowd Control already go together like peanut butter and jelly.




With 4 slots, it's slotted with around 65% accuracy, 96% damage and 18% end redx. A set of Obliteration is just begging to go into this power. Or maybe a set of Sciroccos with a Force Feedback proc. Lots of possibilities.

I'm starting up the missions available for my last contact, Operative Rutger. I really don't like Operative Rutger only because his missions tend to be full of AVs/EBs. It's not that I mind fighting them, it's just that Fara right now isn't properly slotted to deal with them at her current level. Because of that, she tends to go through AV/EB missions slowly and methodically using inspirations, temp powers and pets. I'm hoping that by the 40s, an elite boss will be a minor speed bump rather than the neighborhood detour it tends to be right now.

Finally, I'm very impressed with the Bane spec at this point. I have a similar level Widow and had a Fortunata that reached the high 30s and I can honestly say that at this point in time, the Bane feels more powerful. The Bane just does a satisfying amount of damage. Sure, it can't slug it out in long fights, but because of the ability to deliver tremendous amounts of burst damage, her fragility can be forgiven and worked around.

Having experience with a Widow, I tried to slot up the Bane's attacks with a lot of endurance reduction since it took me many levels and a lot of slots until I felt my Widow was endurance efficient. Banes don't seem to worry about endurance reduction/recovery as much since fights are far shorter. Either the opposition is dead or your Bane is in trouble. The balancing point seems to be their fragility, which hopefully I'll rectify in the coming levels. All in all, the character up to this point has been a pleasant surprise.

Great screenshot! I love the guy in the foreground flailing as he falls backward.

This is a great thread.

Day 13: Starting to Toughen Up

It's been a little while since I last updated. Real life put a damper on my gaming lately and I wasn't able to have any significant gaming time until today. When I last left Fara, she had hit level 33 and was able to slot up Crowd Control.

The only contact she had in her list was Operative Rutger, a rather unappealing one due to the fact that the missions take place in the far reaches of Nerva Archipelago, has two Vindicator elite boss/AVs in it (Luminary/Infernal) and a lot of defeat all missions. Still, it was better than running radios, and Fara surprisingly had little difficulty with most of the missions. Luminary went down easily enough with generous inspiration use while Infernal required the use a Shivan.

Finishing up Operative Rutger's story arcs and available missions, Fara reached level 34 and was without a contact. I thought of perhaps running a few radio missions but thought it would fun to test out the build by running the one-person Ouroboros TFs given by Mender Lazarus and Mender Tesseract respectively.

For those that don't know or haven't tried these TFs in a while, both TFs are full of elite bosses/AVs and can be soloed by a strong soloing character. Even at the +1/x1/bosses difficulty Fara used, the TFs weren't a cake walk.

Mender Lazarus' last mission faces you off against three Fifth Column elite bosses while giving you two of your own. The last mission is actually tactically challenging and rewards methodical play. Enter the last room, pull the large number of Fifth Column grunts as much as you can and then attack Requiem first, Vandal second and pretty much ignore Maestro. Of your two "companions", Nosferatu pretty much holds his own while Burkholder is pretty much fodder.

The mission actually went pretty well. As a precaution, Fara summoned a Shivan and then concentrated fire on Requiem after clearing the gathered Fifth. After Requiem went down, only Vandal remained. The mission ended pretty much after Vandal was defeated since Maestron was killed off by a combination of Venon Grenade debuffs and Noseferatu's Soul Drain (yeah, he's pretty ignorable).

A screenshot of Fara and company taking down Vandal after Requieum was downed is below. Of course, Vandal tried to ran away like a little girl and hide behind a huge group of Fifth that were summoned. Venom Grenade and Crowd Control was amazing in those clumps of Fifth soldiers.



After taking on Mender Lazarus' arc, Fara took on Mender Tesserect's. The odd thing about Mender Tesserect's arc is that the hardest mission of the entire arc is probably her first where you have to take on Ms. Liberty and her mom. Miss Liberty was downed pretty quickly but Ms. Liberty required a use of a Shivan. After, taking out those two heroes, downing the Prove Yourself to Arachnos elite bosses in the second mission, it's trivial for a Bane or Stalker to stealth your way to the roof and down a pretty easy elite boss (President Marchand).



So I was feeling kind of arrogant, and after leveling to 35, decided to visit Ghost of Ghost Widow Past (Sister Airlia) in Cimerora. I think the game must have thought that Fara was having too easy of a time with all the elite bosses she was beating up, so it threw me a curveball.



Level 40 Ballista Elite Boss with a level 40 Longbow Warden! Against a +5 elite boss, Fara didn't stand a chance even though she summoned both a Shivan and Loa Bone zombie and used as many inspirations she can chug. Of course with Ghost Widow being defeated, it led to my first failed mission in over two years.

So with that, my string of elite boss successes came to an end...at least for now. I logged off a little humbled but eager to see what the next few levels will bring. Level 36 provides more slots, level 37 allows Fara to slot her first few sets and level 38 brings Weave.

Wonderful thread. I'm greatly enjoying it. And you've inspired me to treat my new stalker as a bit of a project, which I'm finding to be a lot fun. I'm taking tips on marketing from this thread (as well as the Market & Inventions forum, and the very helpful people I play with), and am planning out some goals for her to hit as she progresses (as opposed to the..shall we say..."free-form way" I usually approach the game). Thanks for taking the time to post all this. Looking forward to seeing Fara hit her goals.

- Crystal

Great thread, inspired me to finally start a SoA of my own and its been a blast so far.

Looking forward to your continuing adventures

Day 14: Meaningful Sets At Last!

It's been at least a week since I was in game, largely due to work and RL pressures. Today was the first chance to have a few hours to my time so I concentrated on getting Fara to level 37 at last. Level 37, as I mentioned before, is significant because it finally allows her to put in some matched IO sets for meaningful bonuses. In Fara's case, level 37 represents the chance to set two full Touch of Death sets.

I worked through Magus Mu'Drakan's story arc and dinged 37 conveniently before the show down with Lilitu, the demoness who's also Infernal's mom. At level 37, Fara now has 30% melee, 38% ranged, 24% AoE for positional defense. I consider 30% a significant benchmark because it's as about as good as what you can get with a non-fighting pool SR scrapper with SOs. Further, a single small purple also gets you to 42.5%, which is more than enough for elite bosses.

A screen shot of Fara's enhancement screen at level 37:



One disappointment was that I was also hoping to six slot Obliterations at level 40. Sadly, the quad (which I was only able to get at level 41) and the Acc/Rech pieces escaped me.

As you can see in the screen shot above, Fara is still using a mix of commons, some frankenslotted attacks and now a couple of full sets. I think a lot of players get this idea in their heads that a character needs full sets to be truly powerful while in reality a character with smart slotting, a mixture of different pieces can be extremely effective.

After slotting the Touch of Deaths, I sent Fara with her final fight with Lilitu. The fight was a let down only because she conned as an even con elite boss. Fara used one purple during the fight and a green when she got mobbed with minions, but it was anti-climatic. I doubted that she needed those at all. However, the fight confirmed that an even-con elite boss wasn't much of a challenge even with minimal inspiration use.



Disappointed with that fight, I continued the Magus Mu'Drakan's and got a surprise elite boss in one of his non-story arced missions: Baphomet. Baphomet due to his incredible regeneration and healing can be quite a pain to take out. Still, while Fara did use some inspirations, she didn't have to resort to a Shivan to take him out.



Overall, I'm very impressed with this Bane at level 37. Some of the things that I expected to happen haven't occured. I expected to be mezzed a lot more but so far, defense and minimal mez protection has largely kept Fara free from holds and stuns. I expected Fara to be knocked back a lot more, but slotting an additional -kb IO early seems to have cut that down considerably. I expected the Bane's offense to be poor and have been quite pleased with the offensive output: quite a bit stronger than a Huntsman or even a Night Widow at the same level.

The parts that did surprise me were the relatively weak AoE, which has been rectified with Venom Grenade and Crowd Control, and the squishiness, which has been mitigated by fighting pool (tough/weave) and hitpoint bonuses.

I like this character far more than either my Fortunata or my Night Widow, and I'll probably take her to the end game at 50.

I heard from a few players that the game changes again for a Bane starting at level 40+. I'm almost there with Fara and will see how it goes when I reach those levels. In particular, I'm told that Carnie Master Illusionist and Arachnos Banes are particularly troublesome. I guess I'll have to see, and I'll definitely look up Vivacious Verandi when I go to St. Martial.